Senators Rubio, Lee push US tax plan to cut corporate rates – Reuters

Posted: Wednesday, March 04, 2015

WASHINGTON, March 4 (Reuters) – Republican Senators Marco
Rubio and Mike Lee proposed a tax reform plan on Wednesday they
said would help drive long-term growth by reducing the top
corporate rate and simplifying rates for other taxpayers.

Writing in the Wall Street Journal, the two conservative
lawmakers said their plan would lower the maximum tax rate for
companies to 25 percent from 35 percent. Individuals and
families would pay a rate of either 15 percent or 35 percent,
rather than the current tiered system with seven rates going as
high as nearly 40 percent.

Rubio, a possible 2016 presidential contender, and Lee are
scheduled to hold a 10 a.m. EST (1500 GMT) news conference at
the Capitol to formally unveil the plan.

The senators said their proposal would end the “double
taxation” that companies face on both capital gains and
dividends. It also would call for companies with operations in
other countries to be taxed only in the country where income is
earned.

“The need for tax reform is most acute on the business side
of the Internal Revenue Code,” they said in an op-ed piece in
the Journal.

“The current system inhibits businesses from expanding,
creating jobs and investing in the American economy by taxing
them too much and taxing them unfairly,” they wrote.

The plan is likely to be a central theme to any presidential
campaign launched by Rubio, the junior senator from Florida.

Corporations have long called for the U.S. tax code to be
rewritten, and both Democrats and Republicans have acknowledged
the complex system could use reforms. Still, Washington has been
unable to overhaul the system for decades.

In their proposal, Rubio and Lee, who represents Utah, said
families and individual taxpayers also would see greater
fairness by paying one of the two new rates and having
deductions available to all filers.

It also would eliminate the so-called marriage penalty,
which imposes a higher rate on people who are married when they
file jointly rather than filing as individuals. People with
children would also receive a new $2,5000 per child tax credit
to help lessen the “financial burden of raising the next
generation of taxpayers,” Rubio and Lee wrote.

Last month, House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Paul
Ryan, the Republican Party’s leading voice on taxes and budgets,
said the current Congress has just months to enact any tax deal.